Register Now

In order to be able to post messages on the The Planted Tank Forum forums, you must first register.
Please enter your desired user name, your email address and other required details in the form below.

User Name:

Password

Please enter a password for your user account. Note that passwords are case-sensitive.

Password:

Confirm Password:

Email Address

Please enter a valid email address for yourself.

Email Address:

Location

Your Location. As precise as you feel comfortable with.

Security Question

While balancing on a piece of wood, two inches by four inches known as a 2x4, John and his friend Sally both spotted a dalmatian inside of a truck with sirens. The animal with John and Sally is a _ _ _?

Insurance

Please select your insurance company (Optional)

Log-in

User Name

Remember Me?

Password

Human Verification

In order to verify that you are a human and not a spam bot, please enter the answer into the following box below based on the instructions contained in the graphic.

Additional Options

Miscellaneous Options

Automatically parse links in text

Topic Review (Newest First)

04-20-2015 12:26 PM

mistryde

Hi,
I have a 67 gal planted that is 24" high. I'm using T5 HO & spiral CFL currently, total 150 watts. Plants are pretty much happy. I'm planning to replace these with LED flood lights. I'd like to increase the lights a bit to allow for high light plants. The options available here are with 60 & 120 deg beam angle. 50W are with 6000 lumens 30 with 2700 lumens.
1. Should I go for 30W x 3 or 50W x 2 ?
2. What should be the distance between two lights
3. What will be the optimum height from water surface

03-11-2015 10:39 PM

Roughrider

I just flooded my 20g long with 2x10 watters running off a PC power supply. The light output is pitiful. Going to return them and go with 2x20w

I have 4 @ 30 w on my 125gal long and my tank looks great and plants are growing.

Wish you had a thread on it, for I would like to see a pic of it.

01-09-2015 05:05 AM

Dannyboy760

Hi everyone I'm new to the planted aquarium world but have been into reef tanks for the last 1 1/2. I have 4 @ 30 w on my 125gal long and my tank looks great and plants are growing.

12-04-2014 04:35 PM

ziggnick

I also feel like with the cfl I would just be meeting the light requirements and if further down the road I wanted to move up from low light I wouldn't be able to continue with the cfl and would have to start all over again with lighting where as I could add a light or 2 of led and be in good shape... overall cfl just isn't where I want to go

12-04-2014 04:18 PM

ziggnick

150 gallon it's about 4ftÃ22"x31"

I know I can run cfls but for the price I belive these leds will actually cost me less in the long run, I would need a cfl of 30w or better which wouldn't be cheap then a clamp lightish apparatus that would have to be extra deep to accommodate the larger size cfl bulb and all the while my local stores don't carry any of that stuff so I'd be sourcing it all online paying shipping for each oder potentially and then probably using more watts than
Normal to help it cover the tank in light get
to the bottom meanwhile the bulbs will burn out fast than the led and then I'll be replacing so ve pretty much wrote off the whole cfl deal.... if I had a normal tank say 18" I'd be all about it and I may still use cfl one day but for this tank I feel like led is my best bet

12-04-2014 03:22 PM

ReluctantHippy

What size tank? If you wanted to run cfls you could; 29" isn't too deep.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ziggnick

So I actually ran across these lights the other night when I was looking for a alternative to cfls

My problem is I'm using a reef tank to plant in so from substrate to the top of the water is about 29" which a cfl just won't do effectively

What do you think my best bet would be to get lowlight hardy plants to grow at that depth, from what I've read I feel like maybe 4 30w lights would do it or would I be wise to move up to the 50w and use 4....

I want to make a nice hood for my tank so I don't want it to be 3 ft tall on top of my tank because I went too big of wattage and now have to raise the lights waaaay up if you know what I'm saying

12-03-2014 12:34 PM

ziggnick

So I actually ran across these lights the other night when I was looking for a alternative to cfls

My problem is I'm using a reef tank to plant in so from substrate to the top of the water is about 29" which a cfl just won't do effectively

What do you think my best bet would be to get lowlight hardy plants to grow at that depth, from what I've read I feel like maybe 4 30w lights would do it or would I be wise to move up to the 50w and use 4....

I want to make a nice hood for my tank so I don't want it to be 3 ft tall on top of my tank because I went too big of wattage and now have to raise the lights waaaay up if you know what I'm saying

10-24-2014 04:50 PM

Malakian

I searched around on Google for awhile about these kind of lights. And the info was so wide-spread about the power of the fixtures. Seems like I went a little overboard, as I got 4x 30W for a 70 gallon 26" tall.

Would you recommend 2x or 3x for med/high light?

Will post pictures when I receive them.

12-22-2013 05:48 PM

nicholz

Quote:

Originally Posted by Deano85

Do you know the cause of the failures?

Not sure if bulbs burnt out or drivers failed but either way the fixtures no longer function.

Sent from my SM-N900P using Tapatalk

12-22-2013 03:16 PM

Deano85

Quote:

Originally Posted by nicholz

I echo this experience just on a smaller scale. In less than a year 9/12 of the mix of 20watt floods and 10watt rgbs have failed - stay away! - not worth it for these. Works great until they do not work anymore.
Ben

Do you know the cause of the failures?

12-21-2013 06:43 PM

nicholz

Quote:

Originally Posted by ReluctantHippy

My experience with cheap Chinese LED floodlights:

I have purchased 15 10w, 6 20w, 6 50w, and the fish store I work for ordered an additional 20 20w fixtures. These were from three different manufacturers: VVME and two ebay distributors - internals and casings were almost identical on all but drivers varied with one, screws and wire caps varied on all. So far (all purchased less than 8 months ago) between the store and me all but 14 of the units have stopped working. So of the 47 purchased less than 30% are still working after less than a year.

They are very cheap and provide very nice light while they operate but don't expect to get much life out of the units. In every instance it was a failure of the driver which can be purchased for very cheap but it gets to be a bit of a headache repairing them all the time.

I will admit that my lights were being run in a hot environment often in the high 80s to high 90s. Perhaps the drivers wouldn't have burnt out somewhere cooler.

Only one of these is of the original I installed. Two of the replacements lights have failed in the last week:

A few of the lights I've repaired; I started mounting the drivers to larger heat syncs to get a bit more life out of them:

Always have to have backup drivers on hand:

Just part of the graveyard:

I was a big fan the first couple months but at this point I'm wishing I just purchased a legitimate aquarium light.

I echo this experience just on a smaller scale. In less than a year 9/12 of the mix of 20watt floods and 10watt rgbs have failed - stay away! - not worth it for these. Works great until they do not work anymore.
Ben

10-07-2013 03:21 AM

aroos_tpt

I am slowly talking myself into getting another aquarium. I want it to be large (120 gal) and well planted, of corse.
LED flood lights were my initial idea for lighting, but was afraid that eBay ones won't last. The post above seems to confirm that to certain point. I am also not 100% sure if the light spectrum of flood lights will be sufficient for good plant grow.
Now, reading your posts above I got curious about E27 led bulbs. I saw on eBay there are also bulbs for hydroponic plant grow that I could mix in for better plant grow.

I was wondering if anyone tried those hydroponic plant grow in aquarium and if they worked. Of course their light colour isn't pretty but they would be supporting lighting to normal bulbs.
Is it too much? Would the light cause algae bloom?
Does anyone have experience with E27 bulbs? Do they provide sufficient light? Or would I need like 100 of them?
As I mentioned its a fresh idea and any advice will be much appreciated. Or please, talk me out if it if it's a bad idea.

This thread has more than 15 replies.
Click here to review the whole thread.